


the devil may cry (at the end of the night)

by viscrael



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Introspection, Manga Spoilers, not necessarily romantic linkallen, post-kanda arch but before searching for a.w.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:17:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don’t want to kill you, he didn’t say. I don’t think I can kill you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the devil may cry (at the end of the night)

**Author's Note:**

> devil may cry is such a good allen song tbh
> 
> idk what this is (again) im just . in linkallen HELL right now and theres literally like 9 fics for them on ao3 and theyre all from 2008 so im just gonna. leave all of these here.

Link does not think he’s a very sentimental person, nor does he think that he gets attached to others easily. Even with the people who he had grown up around, he doesn’t think of them particularly _fondly_ ; they’re fine people, and brilliant members of CROW, sure, but he doesn’t care about them in the same way he thinks maybe he should. Since they were taken off the streets, they were not taught how to love others, so much as they were taught how to _serve_ others. They are dogs. That’s all they are.

How much of his apathy towards others is _nature_ and how much of it is _nurture_ , he isn’t quite sure. Would he care about others more if he hadn’t grown up the way he had? If he hadn’t been an orphan? If he had had a chance to learn how to care? Would he have more of a regard for people that was pure, and not based on ranking, had he not lived the way he lived?

He doesn’t know, and he’s been on this godforsaken Earth nineteen years and not once felt that he needed to _love_ others to be human. He has a respect for Lvellie, and he has a great sense of gratitude to the man for taking him in as a child, face dirty and hands clasped together where he begged at a church with the other orphans (repenting for sins he wasn’t sure he had committed, was living a sin, was living as an orphan a sin, was being poor a sin, was trying to survive a sin), but one would be rash to call it something as strong as _love_. Albeit, Lvellie is, if Link had to choose, someone he might call a father figure, as he’s the closest thing to one Link has ever had, but that hardly seems close to love.

Admiration, gratitude. Not love. Especially not now, not love.

Link doesn’t have many friends, doesn’t have much that he does outside of the world of work, but he doesn’t need these things, he doesn’t think. He’s content to serving Central. He’s content with his job.

And he is new—as far as in relation to everyone else he is, at least, because nineteen years under one’s belt is considerably less than thirty or forty, so of course it would make sense that he’s assigned as the one to watch the accused heretic, the one who would be most suited to keeping Allen Walker in check, you can handle that, can’t you, Link? If anything goes wrong, if he tries anything, you have to eliminate him before he does anything to jeopardize the Order. There is no one better suited for the job. There is no one else who can do this.

And even without all those excuses, he thinks, he wouldn’t have been particularly reluctant to carry out his duties, because they are just that: duties are duties are duties, it would make no sense to try to go against them.

Inspector Howard Link is not a sentimental person, nor is he a loving person.

But he starts to think, maybe, after he realizes that obligations turned to wants ( _you have to watch over Walker; I want to watch over Walker; you have to keep the Fourteenth subdued; I want to keep the Fourteenth subdued_ ), that there is something to be said about the way that he’s jumping to the heretic’s (accused; not really, not really a heretic, just accused) side, the way that he gets so inexplicably _angry_ when Allen refuses to eat for days in fear of truth serum being slipped into his meals. He thinks, maybe, that there is something to be said about the way that he isn’t sure how well he can carry out his orders anymore.

Allen is confused at first when he busts down his cell’s door and all but forces him to eat ( _you can’t go days with only water, Jerry made this for you, so you don’t have anything to worry about, and you don’t have any excuses either!_ ), but, Link thinks, also a little grateful. He smiles all melancholy and fake, and looks at the bowl in front of him.

Ever since the incident with the Third Exorcists and the death of Alma Karma and Kanda Yuu, Allen hasn’t looked the same, eyes sunk in his skull with hollow cheeks, lips pressed together because he doesn’t _talk_ anymore, paler than what is healthy, the scar on the left side of his face lighting up in an almost sickly pink against his skin.

Link thinks if he touched it, traced the jagged line down the heretic’s jaw with the tips of his fingers, the pentagon on his forehead, the mark stretching from his ear across the bridge of his nose, it would be raised and bumpy, like a burn scar is after its healed. But he doesn’t touch it, and he doesn’t trace anything with the tips of his fingers, and Allen doesn’t say anything. He eats, but just barely.

Link is not a sentimental person, and Link does not think he is capable yet of love, but there is something to be said about the way he treats Allen Walker, about the way that his desire to save him from the Fourteenth (save this little boy, still only fifteen, orphaned and abandoned, cursed with a demon’s arm and a demon’s eye, his body being thrown out for the taking of someone he does not want to take it, _he is not a bad person,_ Link thinks, _he is not a bad person_ ) has overshadowed his desire to carry out his responsibilities.

Will you kill me, Link? Allen had asked one night, before Alma Karma, before the Third Exorcists, tucked under the safety of his bed, facing the wall, Timcanpy sleeping soundly on the chair next to him. If the Fourteenth takes over my body, will you kill me?

Of course, Link had said, but there was a pause, and he had liked to think that Allen perhaps understood what to fill the blank space in with. I don’t want to kill you, he didn’t say. I don’t think I can kill you.

And the heretic breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
